Unit Balancing Suggestions to CA

[andrewt]

Problems? The Romans actually have good cavalry. I just ran the archers down. Even pre-Marius, you can get Legionary cavalry. After Marius, the Praetorian cavalry is one of the most powerful in the game. Equites and Roman cavalry are both serviceable, cheap cavalry.

Archery isn't overly effective, for me. If you shoot armored hoplites or even standard hoplites, they take few casualties with every volley. Against armored hoplites, even Cretan archers have trouble killing them. What they are very effective against are unarmored targets. Armored targets don't take much casualties.

[Morindin]

Problems? The Romans actually have good cavalry. I just ran the archers down. Even pre-Marius, you can get Legionary cavalry. After Marius, the Praetorian cavalry is one of the most powerful in the game. Equites and Roman cavalry are both serviceable, cheap cavalry.

Archery isn't overly effective, for me. If you shoot armored hoplites or even standard hoplites, they take few casualties with every volley. Against armored hoplites, even Cretan archers have trouble killing them. What they are very effective against are unarmored targets. Armored targets don't take much casualties.

Most late game archer units, such as chosen archer warbands, and so forth, eat all Roman Cavalry+ for breakfast in melee in a 1v1 situation.

I swarmed over most of the other races with ease in my campaign game, and I came to a scretching halt against Pontus/Scythia/etc.

I did have an amusing situation (for my enemy) in a multiplayer game last night when I had three units of upgraded cretin archers firing on one stationary unit of upgraded sacred band. 5-6 volleys later from all three units and maybe one sacred band had died :)

But besides that - im not really talking about normal archers, rather the Egyptian Chariot archers.

[andrewt]

Praetorian Cavalry are 12 attack 22 defense. They're only slightly worse than urban cohorts. Of course, there are fewer of them, but I doubt any archer unit in the game can beat them in a melee.

If you're talking about the Egyptian chariot archers, I agree. They have a ridiculously overpowered melee attack. They also have the same mass as an elephant, in the game, which means they can break infantry formation as well as an elephant.

[DisruptorX]

Here's One:

Numidian Infantry have 200 upkeep, but they have a normal unit size and are one of the worst units in the game. Other units like them(eastern infantry) are 170.

[andrewt]

At least they have 8 morale. That's still very high, however.

I'm playing Parthia and I only use their infantry for battering gates and walls. I use the cavalry afterwards. The other primarily cavalry nations like Scythia have better infantry and a better selection of cavalry. I'm going to have fun with Cataphracts soon, though, which is the point of me choosing Parthia, anyway. That and the 2 horse archers units they have. Scythia has 4 different horse archer units, though.